“I know.”
“How long?”
“About twenty minutes.”
“What has dispatch said?”
“They think it’s a software disagreement.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
Good answer.
The first officer spoke from behind us.
“It started after we passed thirty thousand feet.”
His speech was clear.
The doctor immediately told him to stay quiet.
The captain said:
“Autoflight made the first correction.”
“Then the next.”
“Then it began hunting.”
That word told me exactly what he meant.
A system repeatedly trying to correct a condition that either did not exist or was being measured incorrectly.
I felt cold.
Not because I knew the solution.
Because I had seen the pattern before.
Two years earlier.
Different aircraft.
Different system.
Same rhythm.
I said:
“Have maintenance pull the serial history on whichever control-data unit was serviced most recently.”
The captain looked at me.
“That specific?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I did not answer.
“Claire?”
The flight attendant had apparently given him my name.
I watched the display move again.
“Because I’ve seen this behavior once before.”
The captain studied me.
“On what?”
“A military aircraft.”
“What happened?”
My throat tightened.
“It crashed.”
Silence.
Then the captain turned back to the instruments.
“Call dispatch.”
That was how my past came back.
Not with a memory.
With a maintenance question.
Aerwyn Air’s operations center responded within minutes.
They said the aircraft had received scheduled maintenance at Evermere International Airport thirty-six hours earlier.
One flight-control data unit had been removed, inspected and reinstalled.
Nothing unusual.
I asked:
“Reinstalled or replaced?”
The captain relayed it.
Delay.
Then:
Replaced.
“Serial number?”
Another delay.
Longer.
The captain frowned.
“Why are they taking this long?”
I already suspected.
The answer eventually came.
A twelve-character identifier.
I stopped breathing.
The first four characters matched a supplier family I had seen before.
Not on a commercial aircraft.
On an investigation file locked inside a military safety office two years earlier.
I looked at the captain.
“Ask whether the replacement component was new.”
He did.
Dispatch said:
“Serviceable exchange unit.”
That phrase could mean many legitimate things.
It could also hide an ugly truth.
The captain asked:
“You recognize the serial?”
“Part of it.”
“From where?”
“My last investigation.”
“What investigation?”
I stared at the instruments.
“The one that ended my career.”
Another vibration passed through the aircraft.
The captain made a decision.
“We’re diverting.”
Northbridge was still hours away.
A closer coastal airport sat well within reach.
Aerwyn operations immediately objected.
Not dramatically.
Professionally.
They cited weather.
Ground support.
Passenger disruption.
Maintenance capability.
The captain listened.
Then said:
“I’m declaring a precautionary diversion.”
The response came faster.
An operations executive traveling onboard wanted to speak with him.
The captain frowned.
“Who?”
The lead flight attendant answered over interphone.
“A senior Aerwyn operations director.”
I saw something pass across the captain’s face.
“Why is he on this flight?”
“He says he was traveling to Northbridge for meetings.”
The captain accepted the interphone call.
The executive’s voice was calm.
